Everyone but Gillard should be grateful to Oprah

Poor Julia Gillard really cannot take a trick. She sacrificed her dignity to capitalise on the publicity that would come from welcoming Oprah Winfrey to Melbourne.

As former Treasurer Peter Costello said at the time:

Julia Gillard is the Prime Minister of Australia. She is the person ultimately responsible for sending troops into battle. She is the one who must stand up and insist our country is treated with respect in international forums. She is not a support act for a visiting US celebrity. She didn't do well. In fact, it was cringe-making.

It also didn't work. Gillard's stilited appearance in the first of the four specials on Australia that Oprah screened yesterday confirmed the Prime Minister has shrunk under the responsibilities of her office. Worse, as every Australian watching would have noted but Channel 10 was too polite to show, Oprah repeatedly got her name wrong, pronouncing it as Gil-LARD, as if she were French.

But the rest of Australia should be pleased. The country looked spectacular, and the enthusiasm of Oprah and her nice audience seemed very genuine.

The one criticism I'd have is the misrepresentation of our history by Malarndirri McCarthy, a NT Labor Government Minister shown telling Oprah that Aborigines weren't counted as citizens of Australia until 1968, which Oprah seems to believe meant they weren't actually citizens then:

In fact, Aborigines have been considered citizens from the start of British colonisation. The difference in 1968 was that the referendum the year before had changed the Constitution to oblige the census to count our Aboriginal population.

In most states of Australia, Aborigines have had the right to vote for some 150 years.